Britain's Scientists Are 'Freaking Out' Over Brexit (washingtonpost.com) 517
"To use a nonscientific term, the scientists in the country are freaking out," reports the Washington Post. An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes their report:
The researchers worry that Britain will not replace funding it loses when it leaves the E.U., which has supplied about $1.2 billion a year to support British science, approximately 10 percent of the total spent by government-funded research councils. There is a whiff of panic in the labs.
Worse than a possible dip in funding is the research community's fear that collaborators abroad will slink away and the country's universities will find themselves isolated. British research today is networked, expensive, competitive and global. Being part of a pan-European consortium has helped put Britain in the top handful of countries, based on the frequency of citations of its scientific papers... Anecdotal evidence suggests that headhunters may already be circling.
Meanwhile, NPR reports that Britain's vote to leave the EU "has depressed the value of the British pound," prompting many Britons to vacation at home rather than abroad -- while "Americans will find their dollars go further in Britain these days." And an anonymous Slashdot reader quotes a report from CNBC that Ford "is considering closing plants in the UK and across Europe in response to Britain's vote to leave the EU, as it forecast a $1 billion hit to its business over the next two years."
Worse than a possible dip in funding is the research community's fear that collaborators abroad will slink away and the country's universities will find themselves isolated. British research today is networked, expensive, competitive and global. Being part of a pan-European consortium has helped put Britain in the top handful of countries, based on the frequency of citations of its scientific papers... Anecdotal evidence suggests that headhunters may already be circling.
Meanwhile, NPR reports that Britain's vote to leave the EU "has depressed the value of the British pound," prompting many Britons to vacation at home rather than abroad -- while "Americans will find their dollars go further in Britain these days." And an anonymous Slashdot reader quotes a report from CNBC that Ford "is considering closing plants in the UK and across Europe in response to Britain's vote to leave the EU, as it forecast a $1 billion hit to its business over the next two years."
Oh really? (Score:2, Insightful)
I think Ford are closing plants all over the place. Their sales are weaker in the USA and China too, which is absolutely nothing to do with Brexit, although Brexit is a wonderful excuse for useless executives to hang thei
Re:Oh really? (Score:5, Informative)
Ford had already identified those plants for closure BEFORE the date of the referendum was set.
This is all spin trying to attribute these closures to BREXIT when its due to a general downturn...
Ya rly. (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, perhaps we could find a better way to hand out grants to scientists, so we don't end up wasting it.
Perhaps we could also farm unicorns and sell the sparkles that they poop.
I think your idea is lovely in theory (hey thinks we should waste more?), but very difficult in practice. It turns out that we're already doing about everything right in that the UK has about the best scientific output per unit of currency invested of any large country. Grants are already fiercely competitive, and standards for hiring are orders of magnitude higher than they were 20 or 30 years ago.
I've hashed over this topic many many times. I'm a former academic and it's a somewhat popular topic especially among younger academics (since we get fewer grants than the older ones), but despite many very long, earnest conversations, I've not encountered any ideas that aren't really easily shot down.
It's easy to come up with notions. It's a bit harder to come up with ideas, it's harder still to come up with a plan that isn't really easily shot down because it will fail in some way or be sufficiently more expensive that you may as well just spend the money on the old method and get better results overall.
Funding Levels Not Grant Allocation (Score:3)
I mean there's the Replication Crisis to consider, and the Decline Effect, and then somewhere north of 40,000 neurology papers that were a waste of time
Actually your examples point to the problem which is not how the grants are assigned within a field but the level of funding between different fields. The effects you point to are all predominantly (but not exclusively) related to medical sciences. This is an area where politicians, corporations and the public love to pour huge quantities of money into because of the intense personal connection medicine has to all of us.
A perfect grant allocation system will give the most promising research ideas the hi
Re: (Score:3)
It is absurd to complain about how much money goes to different areas of scientific research while not complaining even more about the money wasted on offense, er... I mean "defense". If just 5% of the military budget (over $600 billion if you count overseas contingency operations) was redirected to the NIH (somewhere around $35 billion in funding) then you would literally double the NIH budget, and put lots of out-of-work scientists back to work. Over half a million people die young from cancer, but the mi
Re:Oh really? (Score:4, Informative)
The EU is a pretty efficient way of handing the money out. It goes to the best places from a larger pool, and makes it easier to see cross-border cooperation opportunities.
I'd be amazed if they maintained the funding levels they were getting previously, since we were getting more out than we put in which means we would would need to increase our funding levels at a time when we have a recession looming and many other groups are clamouring for matched EU funding too. The worsening immigration situation is not going to help either.
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Actually, some of the key papers behind the "replication crisis" notion haven't stood up to scrutiny. I am not being ironic here; the non-replicability results haven't been replicated.
This of course is normal for science. Error is an expected part of the scientific method; the existence of non replicable results is presumed. That's why when a hypothesis is proposed it's almost always immediately refuted. Then it will be un-refuted, and after that re-refuted. This continues until evidence begins to decisi
Good riddance (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe next time walk the streets in time. If you can't be bothered with politics, politics can't be bothered with you. Britain dialed itself backwards one generation. Which is not the worst time to be in unless you want to be at the forefront of anything. Which would be the point of most scientific research. So obviously scientists had a world to lose but you would not have noticed it. And in absence of respectable input they could trust, the voters basically were back to gambling on buzzphrases.
Every intelligent person (Score:5, Insightful)
in Britain should be freaking out about the brexit.
As a convinced European I find it highly amusing that the main "leave" campaign guys are now running away and officially stating that they have no idea what they actually planned (Yeah, we heavily lied in order to get you to approve a plan which we don't have, because it does not make any deeper sense).
I hope that the EU gives them choice between coming back without any special status, joining the Euro and the Schengen zone or remaining in "splendid isolation". In case of the latter: not terrible for the rest of the EU - one competitor is gone, and in 30 years there will be a new developing country with cheap labor.
Re:Every intelligent person (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Every intelligent person (Score:4, Insightful)
Agree with everything you say, with one exception. It wasn't for the "BrExit" camp to have a post-referendum plan. That was the government's job. All the snide comments regarding the apparent vacuum are in fact a misdirected reflection of the fact that Cameron, the playground bully, got a bloody nose and then decided to run home to his Mummy.
If Cameron had said, *before* the referendum, that, "In the event that the country votes to leave the EU, I will stand aside to make way for a new Leader who can take on the Article 50 negotiations in good faith," then it would have been fair to expect the Leave camp to have a structure and plan in place. He said no such thing, so towering was his arrogance that he would win. He represented the sitting government of the day. It was his job to ensure a contingency plan was in place, but was so smug in the run-up that he had ministers saying, "There is no plan B".
His mistake.
Re:Every intelligent person (Score:4, Insightful)
That is because Brexit is not a fact yet and it will not be for some years to come. Everybody hopes May et al., together with the EU will now do the sensible thing and keep the UK in the EU when the public has forgotten about the election.
Re:Every intelligent person (Score:5, Insightful)
Democracy isn't just having votes. Democracy will not work unless the people making the decisions are well informed about the issues.
There was nothing democratic about the referendum given the level of misinformation being peddled by the anti-EU media. Under normal circumstances, the UK is a representative democracy: we elect people to represent us and make the decisions, then we fire them when they screw up badly enough to notice. That works because ordinary people don't have the time or resources to do the research to make the right decisions.
This referendum was an unnecessary and unmitigated disaster. Too many people had no real idea of the benefits and costs of the EU. For instance, both Cornwall and Wales voted decisively to Leave and both are in receipt of billions of pounds of EU grants as deprived areas. Now they are begging the government to replace the funding, but that is by no means a given.
Re:Every intelligent person (Score:4, Insightful)
Or appointing governments to run countries that are not elected by the people.
Can you give an actual, real-world example for the EU appointing some country's government?
The fact that most pro-EU remain voters after the referendum reacted with predictable "well that vote didn't count" or "let's have a do over!" should have come as no surprise to anyone.
Yeah... except that the petition for a do-over was opened by a pro-Leave voter and opened BEFORE the referendum.
But why should facts matter, right?
If everyone wanted that a majority of the population would not have voted to leave.
Um... you're assuming that everyone was fully informed and aware of all the consequences while voting.
But we heard enough voices of people who voted leave and then started to realize what benefits they're getting from the EU that they might lose.
People change their mind all the time.
EU memebership benefitted some aspects of society in the UK, but impacted a lot of people negatively. It's really good for the rich and powerful though so you don't often hear about the rest of it.
Cornwall are the rich and powerful?
The farmes who need the subsidies are rich and powerful?
The scientists that may loose funding are rich and powerful?
You are certainly -ful of something...
Re: (Score:3)
Or appointing governments to run countries that are not elected by the people.
Can you give an actual, real-world example for the EU appointing some country's government?
Well to be fair he may be referring to the disgraceful way Greek democracy was subverted.
The fact that most pro-EU remain voters after the referendum reacted with predictable "well that vote didn't count" or "let's have a do over!" should have come as no surprise to anyone.
Yeah... except that the petition for a do-over was opened by a pro-Leave voter and opened BEFORE the referendum. But why should facts matter, right?
That whole petition thing was frankly daft. One thing a democratic country can't start doing is catering for those who can't be bothered to get their finger out and make their opinion count. Personally I'm all for compulsory voting- of course if in any voting situation nothing that was on offer worked for you then spoiling your ballot paper is to be encouraged.
If everyone wanted that a majority of the population would not have voted to leave.
Um... you're assuming that everyone was fully informed and aware of all the consequences while voting. But we heard enough voices of people who voted leave and then started to realize what benefits they're getting from the EU that they might lose. People change their mind all the time.
Yes indeed. Rather annoyingly the remain campaign missed t
Re:Every intelligent person (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you will find most people are NOT freaking out about it.
Yeah the freak-out stopped because people lack that kind of energy. It's settled down to a hope that somehow the Tories will fail to put anything coherent together and prevaricate so long nothing happens.
Business are still investing
Not as much.
I notice also that large non-EU economies are tripping over themselves to position for new trade deals with the UK. Australia and New Zealand for example are quick out of the blocks.
That's good and all, but why do you think the EU is our biggest trading partner? No trade deal will be a substitute for geographic closeness.
Brexit, more than anything else, was a two-fingered gesture to the political establishment in the UK and in the EU whose lack of democracy is somewhat breathtaking.
Oh yeah we really stuck 2 fingers up to the political establishment by voting the way a bunch of Tories said we should, and we really gave a boost to democracy by getting ourselves an unelected PM. Fortunately we still have all of our democratically elected MEPs for now.
Wheeling out Obama who basically threatened the UK economy was a complete disaster.
This just shows the inianity of the exit campaign. The truth is apparently fear-mongering. But hey who needs facts. You can win a campaign on lies and innuendo.
As for science there funding in theory would be replaced by the UK funding.
Just like any true brexiter you have no grasp of reality.
I suspect those whose funding is spent on Climate Change and fluffy Environmental research are sweating as the current UK government may not be quite as keen to throw money at them.
You want the government to be the arbiter of truth now? What were you blithering about democracy just a moment ago?
Some of us aren't quite so keen to live in a Germany-dominated super state.
Well that's nice, because you weren't.
It didn't work out too well last time
Brexit because of WWII. Righty ho.
Re: (Score:3)
That's why we left.
You didn't leave yet.
Whatever happened because of the decision is just in anticipation of what is yet to come. Things will get worse.
Re:Every intelligent person (Score:4, Interesting)
Matt Ridley pointed out that most scientists are misinformed about how EU science funding works. You don't have to be in the EU.
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You think that there is peace in Europe because the troops stationed in Germany and the nuclear weapons of France and the UK? Seriously? So the Germans would love to invade everyone again, and only don't do that because they fear the mighty British? You are living in a fantasy world. Wake up. Go visit Germany. Talk to them. Read about the origins of the EU, about the Coal and Steel Community. Read what Churchill thought about it.
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I notice also that large non-EU economies are tripping over themselves to position for new trade deals with the UK.
Of course they are. That's because the bit of 'free trade' that politicians don't often talk about is free movement of capital. While the pound is weak, any country that has a treaty that permits free movement of capital is in a position to buy up British assets at bargain basement prices. We've already seen a big spike in foreign investments in UK property since the referendum, which has made the housing shortage even worse. Or was 'foreign ownership of Britain' what you meant by 'independence'?
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Some of us aren't quite so keen to live in a Germany-dominated super state
Perhaps you should. Germany is functioning quite well. Very little corruption, low unemployment, booming economy, not as many brain-dead, fear-mongering tabloids as in the UK (just one), healthy multi-party democratic system of federal states, clean cities and pro natural environment policies promoting renewable energy sources, good internet connections, practically no religious bigotry or nationalist extremism... also, not as snobbish and self-absorbed as some of our friendly neighbours... ^_^
We could use
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Re:Every intelligent person (Score:4, Informative)
You said
a terrorist attack per week by your "refugees"
The Syrian who killed a woman was hardly a terrorist attack. They knew each other and it was likely a personal issue due to some argument, and the guy went bonkers. Men killing women, especially their wives or girlfriends unfortunately happens a thousandfold all across the world.
The Afghan in the train attack was not a refugee and the German-Iranian obviously wasn't either, and in fact the latter was a right-wing attack motivated against immigration, and he only killed foreign-looking people.
So, no terrorist attack by a refugee so far.
Alert me when you see something comparable to the Trevi Fountain in "vibrant" Munich
Now you're just trolling... come on. Show me somethign comparable to the Trevi Fountain in London, Stockholm, Dublin...
Re:Every intelligent person (Score:5, Insightful)
You must be Greek ;-)
No actually, it isn't about "Germany", it is about bureaucracy. There's nothing especially wrong about bureaucracy, today. But it is slow. It doesn't adapt well to sudden shocks to the system. It isn't flexible. There is a leave argument that the EU turned into a bureaucracy linked to corporatism and failed its social mission. And eventually it fails growth because growth needs flexibility and adaptability. It is the opposite of "stronger together" -- sounds good until you realise you're still small compared to the world, and you're now slower because most of the time you're still arguing over how to reconcile East European problems with German problems with UK problems with Italian problems with Spanish problems -- they're all different and need different approaches.
And the attitudes of UKIP supporters are just typical of the xenophobia you find in all other cultures. If anything, if you want rid of xenophobia, you'd have to stop immigration, because northern European tolerant values are more the exception than the norm in the world. (It is probably just an accident of history, it could have happened anywhere). That'll change in time, as the whole world becomes more tolerant, but you can't just get rid of it. So whether UKIP was for or against brexit is a moot point, as it cancels out.
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Bullshit. Areas with the least immigration are the ones that complain about it most. it's a cultural human thing - we are scared of "them" until we know they are more like "us" than we ever imagined. When we grow up not thinking of the various shades of skin around us as different, it stops mattering, as it should.
Your arguments about "most of the time" being spent on inter-EU relations is bizarre, as sure it sounds on the surface like a right-old damning of the EU, but on closer inspection you're not ac
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I think the Germans today are more like Nega-Nazis. They swung so far away from the whole Nazi "we're gonna invade and genocide people" and right to "we're going to invite our own invasion and get our own people genocided." They need to figure out this happy balance where you neither invade, nor welcome your own invasion. The UK is wise to distance themselves from people going through such mass insanity right now as the Germans are.
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What insanity? Of the one-million-plus people it rescued from danger (and shored up its ageing population with, ensuring a brighter future for anyone wishing to accept a state pension or rely on the state for assistance), the vast majority have been model citizens. The police statistics reflect this. Your argument is simply not grounded in reality. It seems you are not in Germany - I am, and have been since before this all kicked off. It might behove you to actually learn about what you speak of before
Re: (Score:3)
Statistics and facts are racist, don't you know?
Re:Every intelligent person (Score:4, Insightful)
It was a bluff to get more from the EU. Unfortunately their own people called it.
Re:Every intelligent person (Score:4, Interesting)
Or not. While I think Remain would have been the better choice, I don't think Leave has to be a terrible one either; just that it's probably not going to be as good in the long term and it's all down to the negotiations. Right now Germany seems to want a reasonable deal, France seems to want to stick the knife in, and the other 25 countries fall somewhere in betweeen or have yet to make their position clear, so it could easily go either way regarding the EU, and then there are deals to be struck with other countries, especially the Commonwealth, the US, and maybe even China if the delay on Hinckley Point hasn't soured the relationship.
Re:Every intelligent person (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree with the "keep calm and carry on" but - we have no idea what is going to happen, but because of the uncertainty some of us are making sure we'll continue to have funds to get us through any bumps.
For example, we just had the bathrooms in our office redone and the plan was to get the kitchen done next. Right after the referendum (when the bathrooms were completed) a colleague asked "when will the kitchen be done" - he couldn't get his head around the idea that we wanted to keep our cash reserves up for the time being, and that it wasn't scaremongering, just caution.
The problem is that we're not the only ones, and this drop in consumer confidence will have a detremental affedt on the economy - the UK (not our company surprisingly enough) is already seeing this.
Like you I don't actually think Brexit will destroy the country, just that the pain is unlikely to be worth it. And that's speaking as an Irish citizen living and working in the UK.
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Time for a Slashdot Poll . . . (Score:5, Funny)
I am a British scientist and am freaking out.
I am a British scientist and am not freaking out.
I have nothing to do with the EU and don't give a rat's ass about the whole matter.
I am from Scotland and the English can go shave the Queen's.
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After what happened in Greece, Ireland and Portugal, if the EU insists on any new members joining the Euro, they'll be laughed out of the room. The EU is a great project, the Euro is a fucked up disaster.
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As someone who actually cares about our country, I find it incredible that morons frame this debate as if it's a sports match with winners and losers. People who are unhappy with the current situation aren't "bad losers", they're people who are genuinely concerned that we've made a bad decision that will be bad for the UK and bad for the EU.
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You are ignoring the trade deals currently in the making. It's rather difficult to negotiate trade deals between the largest single market in the world, comprising of many member states, and anyone else. This is not difficult to understand. The EU is demonstrably not a complete disaster. You claiming it is then listing a few bizarre claims does not an argument make.
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"A Remain vote would be for the status quo, not very good but at least you know where you are"
Economically at least the status quo was looking pretty good actually.
Historically continuousy very low inflation, Historically highest ever employment in actual numbers and very high percentage, and very stable healthy growth in overall standards of living.
The 'problems' blamed on the 'foreigners' are, in fact, self inflicted
High rents due to a completely unbalanced and unfair private rental system and the continu
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In the meantime we've just been getting on with it, the sky has yet to fall, the sun still rises most morning and dogs and cats have yet to work out their interpersonal issues.
You are aware that the UK has yet to leave the EU, right?
The real problems will arise once the connections are severed and the UK has to stand on it's own.
EU science programs open to non-members (Score:3)
It is possible to take part in EU science programs and funding like Horizon 2020 without strictly being an EU member. For example, Switzerland used to participate in such programs almost the same way member states do (including receiving funding, but of course also by funding it itself).
Unfortunately, the EU really likes using such programs to put pressure to non-member states for completely unrelated negotiations, and as a result has recently excluded Switzerland from Horizon 2020. I wouldn't be surprised if they used the same tactics also against the UK in the future.
Re:EU science programs open to non-members (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately, the EU really likes using such programs to put pressure to non-member states for completely unrelated negotiations, and as a result has recently excluded Switzerland from Horizon 2020. I wouldn't be surprised if they used the same tactics also against the UK in the future.
It was Switzerland's choice. They voted to restrict immigration and what you outline was the result [startupticker.ch]. Maybe one shouldn't be tied to the other, but they knew what they were getting themselves into when they voted. Don't forget it barely got through [wikipedia.org]. As is often the case with these motions pushed by Switzerland's right-wing party, it's the more rural cantons that vote for them and the urban areas that vote against them. i.e. it's the people who actually interact with foreigners that want them in Switzerland.
Re: (Score:3)
An other point regarding you text.
Any Swiss citizens are equal, and are free to vote directly on each subject without any consideration to the political parties. Might be obvious to any Swiss citizens but it's important to remain this on an international site as this is sadly still today very uncommon around the world. The raw reality is that more than the right oriented citizens voted yes and that the rural citizens is a small fraction of the Swiss total citizens, so you analysis is obviously wrong.
I am re
Re:EU science programs open to non-members (Score:4, Interesting)
On the plus side, we're now an even more attractive place for DARPA to fund - we were already cheap compared to most US institutions and just became 10% cheaper...
Re:EU science programs open to non-members (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, but you need to be a third-world county or an associated country; source here [europa.eu]. Essentially, you can get funding if you are outside the EU if you are:
Developed countries like US, Canada, Russia and China are excluded, and that's the set in which the UK will land after Brexit. Their only option is to join as an Associated Country, but that is more expensive than staying in as an EU member. Otherwise, they can wait until their economy tanks bad enough to join the other list.
I am coordinator for two EU projects, each with 6 partners over 5 countries, and I know the system fairly well. And I have a proposal with one UK partner in processing, damnit.
For An Article Concerning Scientific Research... (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, the piece makes much of comments by Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, that one third of the teaching staff in Edinburgh hold EU passports and are "very twitchy right now". Well, that's real science, right there, eh? I mean, that's an empirical survey if ever there was one.
What the British Government has said (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36916836) is that it wants and expects to protect the rights of EU workers currently living in Britain, but that such protections would be conditional upon EU countries providing the same protections for UK citizens living in the EU. That doesn't seem reasonable, but it doesn't explain the scaremongering attempted by the Washington Post.
I guess it is worth pointing out that President Obama and the US Administration were very much in favour of the UK remaining within the EU. Washington saw the UK membership of the EU as a lever it could apply to get the EU to go along with things like TTIP and joint military participation with operations like those in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In other words, you have to treat this article in exactly the same way that a scientist would treat a claim that some random sub-atomic particle could travel faster than the speed of light: look for substantiating evidence; look for corroboration; examine the sources of evidence; look at the statistical significance of the sampled data, and so on.
This rather shoddy article contains a lot of supposition, suggestion and conjecture, but it has been very selective in it's reporting of "facts".
Nothing to see here. Move along, move along.
This has NOTHING to do with worker right (Score:3)
The article is about sciences grant, collaborations. Let us say you had a lab in Frankfurt wanting to have a 5 year collab on a subject, and they have the choice between an UK lab and a swedisch one. Which one do you think would be safe form them to take ? Excately : not the UK one. And to add , let us say you are a researcher in UK getting an EU grant. What hapenned afterward ? *maybe* the rgant runs to tis end, but afterward ? Well here you go . no more EU grant and now the Uk has to give more grants to *
inevitable (Score:3)
The science was always going to be the first one to be hit from brexit. Basically the system is based on funding collaborations across the EU, and rightly or wrongly, collaboration groups are dropping UK based research institutes as a high risk to the projects funding prospects. There has been no real impact yet as very few grants have been awarded since the vote, but as we see the next few rounds of various Horizon 2020 EU grant scheme go through we will see a drop in funding going to the UK.
Next that will be obvious is the decrease in funding for regional development, and that will be when it starts to impact the people that actually voted to leave. That is going to take a year or so to become obvious.
My frustration with the referendum is that the leave side of the vote wasn't actually had no specific actions assigned to it in the law that set it up, in the end it was a very expensive nation wide opinion poll on EU membership. In a way, people who voted leave didn't actually vote for anything concrete.
The vote should have had article 50 legislatively tied to the vote when the referendum was first setup, with an automatic and immediate invocation of it outside the control of the UK parliament and prime minister. It would have dramatically curtailed the leave campaigns ability to basically come up with contradictory and fanciful scenarios of what voting leave would mean, it would have been a much starker and obvious choice.
Re: (Score:3)
The vote should have had article 50 legislatively tied to the vote when the referendum was first setup, with an automatic and immediate invocation of it outside the control of the UK parliament and prime minister.
Would not work. How should it? Without the parliament voting for leaving they can not invoke Article 50.
That phrase needs to die (Score:3)
Buyers market. Get in now! (Score:3)
My company is actually expanding operations with two British companies we do business with. Much of this is possible by the weakened pound and knowing that their EU membership tax (which was shockingly large we found out) will be lifted. I'm starting to think all this fear mongering in the media is being orchestrated by the big fish so they can have first dibs at the best pieces.
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As a whole, the country paid more than it got back. Scientists, on the other hand, got a "good" deal.
Though it certainly did come with a lot of strings attached. Leaving aside the fact that all scientists became paid lobbyists for the EU, much of that "research" money had to be spent on specific things, such as travel and meetings, and all of the "research" that was actually carried out had to be done in accordance with the EU's rules, which were mainly focused on the production of detailed status reports k
Re:But they pay more to the EU than they get back. (Score:5, Insightful)
As a whole, the country paid more than it got back. Scientists, on the other hand, got a "good" deal.
Though it certainly did come with a lot of strings attached. Leaving aside the fact that all scientists became paid lobbyists for the EU, much of that "research" money had to be spent on specific things, such as travel and meetings, and all of the "research" that was actually carried out had to be done in accordance with the EU's rules, which were mainly focused on the production of detailed status reports known as "work packages". An EU-funded research project would produce a tonne of paperwork, lots of office politics, and very little actual science.
Sort of like most bureaucratic organizations. It's not surprising the same thing happens on this side of the pond.
I will make an observation, those at the top of the food chain on both sides aren't the best at advancing science but rather navigating the politics of their respective funding bodies and insuring compliance with minutiae of bureaucracy.
Those are the same people that will be out in the cold with Brexit. Not surprising they would be upset.
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The paperwork is really not that bad. You need to report your results and how you spend the EU money. Other research project would generate a similar amount of paper trail. As soon as your project is greenlight, the amount of documentation is fair given the big amounts of money most project receive. The bigger issue is that to get your project funded you need to send in big and really well written project proposals and your chances of actually getting money are rather small.
Re:But they pay more to the EU than they get back. (Score:5, Informative)
The paperwork is really not that bad.
As a former Framework Warrior, the hell it ain't!
Other research project would generate a similar amount of paper trail.
No they don't. Compare, for example the reporting requirements of RCUK to the EU framework projects.
These reporting requirements relative to the amount of actual work of these projects are legedary. It's what grizzled old postdocs talk about in the pub.
Nonetheless, the money is still good, and you get to keep the equipment after and keep researching with it. Not to mention the inevitable side projects that the postdocs and students work on. I think the indirect impact of the work is actually more than the direct impact sometimes. I did my best work while moonlighting on an FP7 project.
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How is it a problem when you start losing less money? Don't English scientists know math?
On the simple calculation fees - money coming then yes, we spent 100 million a week. On the other hand if you count the benefits in terms of trade, inward investment by companies wanting to do business in Europe, etc. then we almost certainly gained. The brexiter's argument (when not lying) was that they'd rather be poorer with fewer immigrants [telegraph.co.uk].
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And what does popularism get you? A deep and long depression, unemployment and no less immigrants.
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And what does popularism get you? A deep and long depression, unemployment and no less immigrants.
Absolutely. The biggest worry is that the government maintains the same level of immigration to keep business costs (i.e. wages) low, but that without the preference to European countries that means more Muslims - with the consequent increase of child rape gangs, terrorist acts, "honour" killings, no-go-areas etc.
Re:But they pay more to the EU than they get back. (Score:5, Funny)
And what does popularism get you? A deep and long depression, unemployment and no less immigrants.
Absolutely. The biggest worry is that the government maintains the same level of immigration to keep business costs (i.e. wages) low, but that without the preference to European countries that means more Muslims - with the consequent increase of child rape gangs, terrorist acts, "honour" killings, no-go-areas etc.
Or worse; more Australians.
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The muslims that immigrate are usually those that run away from: child rape gangs, terrorist acts, "honour" killings, no-go-areas etc
Re:But they pay more to the EU than they get back. (Score:4, Interesting)
And what does popularism get you? A deep and long depression, unemployment and no less immigrants.
Crystal ball ??
How long has that depression of the U.K.'s manufacturing sector been going on ?
Re:But they pay more to the EU than they get back. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Trade deficit is a net loss due to trade.
No, it's not. You got something for that money after all. Or do you call every buy a loss?
You can also source the goods and services domestically, or not import optional goods at all. Both those reduce the trade loss.
Then why don't you? The EU doesn't mandate that you do not buy from within your own country.
Re:But they pay more to the EU than they get back. (Score:4, Informative)
It's a problem, due to there being absolutely no guarantee that the UK will spend the money it currently sends to the EU on all the EU supported projects - science, agrigulture, business development. It's not a guarantee, because a lot of the money will go to funding the extra costs Brexit will incur, such as outsourcing trade negotiators [telegraph.co.uk], border security costs (visting EU nationals), vetting of EU nationals wanting to work in the UK, amongst others.
This likely cut in funding was almost immediately obvious when areas such as Cornwal & Wales immediately realised that by voting Brexit, development funds from the EU would be likely to be stopped. Cornwall, for example is wanting assurances about how it will be funded [theguardian.com]
Alternate sources, if you're not keen on the Grauniad:
Cornwall demands £500m to replace lost EU cash [plymouthherald.co.uk]
Cornwall votes decisively for Brexit - then seeks 'assurances' that it won't lose the £60million a year it gets in EU subsidies [dailymail.co.uk]
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The EU governance/parliament values science, and the dickheads running the UK do not value science. That too fucking hard for you to follow?
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Re:But they pay more to the EU than they get back. (Score:5, Insightful)
It is common courtesy to write some text around your links, or at least make them clickable via some basic html.
But nevermind that. The point of your links is that the UK does send about 8 billion pounds to the EU every year (much less than the 18 billion claimed by the Leavers), which is true. But the question to ask is whether this is just money burned, or is it an investment that pays off. In other words, is the extra money the UK makes from being in the EU more than 8 billion an year?
Well, given that the UK's GDP is about 1800 billion pounds, and that the pounds lost about 10% of its value since the Brexit referendum, the UK is already 180 billion bounds poorer. France has immediately overtaken it as the 5th largest economy in the aftermath of the referendum. This suggests that the contribution to the EU budget is just chump change compared to the value of being in the EU.
Re:But they pay more to the EU than they get back. (Score:4, Informative)
The pound fluctuates against the euro, it always has done and it always will. It went from 1.3 to 1.2, but it's been 1.04 before.
That is a bit of an understatement, Gomuchul. The pound has hit 1.04€, it is true, but in the height of the 2008 crysis. If you look at the whole history of the GBP vs. EUR exchange rate [europa.eu], you see that the pound starts off rather valuable, decreases to about 1.5€ and stays there for some yeara, then crashes to 1.05€ in the 2008 crysis, slowly recovers to 1.5€, and then rapidly gets down to 1.2€ as the referendum gets near.
It's true that the effect is not linear, as lots od the pounds are spent in Britain itself, but still the economy is deeply integrated with the EU. I'm sure the amount of wealth lost is much larger than 8 billion pounds, even if it doean't reach 180 billion pounds.
Re:But they pay more to the EU than they get back. (Score:5, Insightful)
"I assume everyone who disagrees with me is a racist. This makes it much easier for me to assume a moral high ground and dismiss their opinions and experiences out of hand without engaging." -everyone who voted to stay
I can see why you people do this. It's very easy and conveinient!
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hrmph. What do you mean "you" people!?
Re:But they pay more to the EU than they get back. (Score:5, Insightful)
Nationalist , but not racist. That word literally has no meaning after the past decade
Re:Spin Spin Spin (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I'm still LOLing... (Score:4, Funny)
We're also far smarter than the Europeans and Americans, so we won't repeat their mistakes and we'll be here to stay at the top.
Says the guy that buys a litre of milk in a fucking plastic bag.
Re:I'm still LOLing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Both staying and leaving were awful options, but those are the only two options that were given by people that only wanted to use it as a pressure tool, not expecting leave to actually win.
The "actually fix EU" option was never on the table.
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Re:I'm still LOLing... (Score:4, Interesting)
We will fix the EU, but the only language it understands is this one. Here's to my country leaving as well!
The correct way to build the EU would have been to grow it slowly, over a period of generations. Forcing it in a few years, using immigration as a weapon against the identity of the people of Europe, for no better reasons than power, money, and glory for a handful of unelected bureaucrats, is shameful and doomed to fail.
Once the coming civil war is over and the guilty have been sentenced, then we can consider a new union. One that actually respects the people and cultures it unifies.
Re:I'm still LOLing... (Score:4, Funny)
"Face it, Canada is rapidly rising to be the next dominant superpower, both politically and economically. We're also far smarter than the Europeans and Americans, so we won't repeat their mistakes and we'll be here to stay at the top."
And thanks to global warming, in another century or so it will be a tolerable place to live.
Re:I'm still LOLing... (Score:4, Interesting)
Not even that - a narrow majority of the votes cast, which on a 70% turnout approximates to 36% of the electorate. There is (or soon will be) a 40% threshold for strikes in health, education and transport to be valid. So a level of support that cannot even validate a one-day strike by, say, teachers, is sufficient to jeopardise Britain's prosperity, territorial integrity and foreign relations?
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Sorry, this belongs below, in response to the comment about the result being the majority of English voters. Scotland, Northern Ireland and London voted firmly to remain.
Re: I'm still LOLing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Virtually everything you read about Brexit in the media before and after the referendum has been FUD.
Britain was one of the world's most prosperous, safe, and culturally advanced nations for over a thousand years.
I'm sure they will do just fine as they watch the EU collapse under the weight of their open borders policies
Empires fall (Score:5, Insightful)
Britain was one of the world's most prosperous, safe, and culturally advanced nations for over a thousand years.
That's no guarantee that it will remain so. The British Empire is a shadow of what it was just 100 years ago.
I'm sure they will do just fine as they watch the EU collapse under the weight of their open borders policies
If the EU collapses for any reason it won't be because of their border policies. The thing most likely to cause the EU to fail is the problem of fixed exchange rates within the currency union. In a single country like the US, capital and labor can flow relatively freely to where it is needed when there are imbalances between regions. But since the EU is comprised of sovereign countries when you get a region in financial distress (see Greece) they have the problem of effectively having fixed exchange rates between sovereign states with more limited labor and capital mobility.
If Greece was still on the drachma, their exchange rate would have adjusted in response to the economic problems. But since they effectively had a fixed exchange rate, they get the problems of a fixed exchange [wikipedia.org] rate. It's not clear that the EU can manage this problem in the long term. Note the already tense and clumsy response to the Greek bailouts. If a bigger economy within the EU (say Spain or France), were to run into similar problems the problem might become too large to handle.
I'm not saying the EU will collapse but if anything causes it to, it most likely will be the failure of the monetary union rather than immigration policy.
Re:Empires fall (Score:5, Insightful)
Immigration policy is the first reason why Brexit happened. Immigration policies is why more and more people in other European countries now think about their own exit from the EU. Immigration policy is the first reason for the popularity of far-right parties. Immigration policy is destroying social cohesion.
If the EU collapses, it will be because of immigration policy.
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Used to have such a problem in the US. During the dust bowl there was a backlash against "Okies" moving to other states. At the a lot of people were labeled Okies even if they weren't from Oklahoma and only because they were from out of state and looking for a job. California even put up police at the borders for awhile to turn back people who had no money. And then Arizona was mad because they were stuck with the migrants instead.
Of course, there was sympathy because these were white migrants. The sam
Free movement of labor and capital (Score:5, Informative)
You do realize that in single countries like the US they have nothing but fixed exchange rates? Texas dollars are the same as California dollars.
The US also has free movement of labor and capital within the country which is how economic imbalances get solved. If New Jersey has economic troubles, the labor and capital can (relatively) easily move to another state. If labor costs in Michigan get out of line, the business moves to Georgia and the people as well. The Federal government controls the currency and acts to help allocate it where needed. Some states effectively subsidize others. Workers can become a citizen of another state simply by moving there. A Greek citizen cannot become a French citizen nearly so easily and the EU has the single currency but they do not have the ability to move capital and labor around as easily to deal with imbalances in local economic conditions.
They also have similar problems to the Greek bailouts (for example, problems with solvency of some of the states/territories in higher debt such as Illinois or Puerto Rico).
The problems in various US states bear little resemblance to the Greek bailout unless you squint really hard and don't go any deeper than the fact that they are related to debt service. The problems in Puerto Rico are solvable if Congress and/or the Executive branch could be bothered to give the island any attention and they are much easier problems to solve than the Greek ones. Interestingly many of the problems in Puerto Rico are challenging precisely because it is not a State. If it were there would be more tools available to them.
Re:Empires fall (Score:5, Informative)
Re: I'm still LOLing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Britain was one of the world's most prosperous, safe, and culturally advanced nations for over a thousand years.
So was Greece. And Rome. And Egypt.
Re: I'm still LOLing... (Score:5, Informative)
Over a thousand years? You really think that Britain in, say, the 13th or 14th C was advanced compared to China, Korea, Japan, the Fatmid Empire, India, or Ghana? You probably didn't even realize Ghana was once a major world power because of the parochialism of history as taught in European schools, but it was the world's largest producer of gold. Ghanian gold in trans-Saharan trade caused inflation in medieval Egypt, and high prices spurred the development of Venetian trade. That brought wealth and knowledge into Italy, making the Renaissance possible. So no Ghana, no European civilization as we know it.
Until the Enlightenment, Europe was the most backward shit-hole in the world, intellectually, culturally and technologically. Why do you think Columbus and everyone else was so anxious to get to China? Because that's where all the good stuff was; amazing stuff like paper, chimneys, dental fillings,cast iron and a merit-based civil service system. The one thing Europe was advanced in, though was fighting. Europeans were unruly, uncivilized barbarians who fought each other all the time, so naturally they got very good at it.
If you were sentenced to be sent back by time machine to live in the 1200s, Europe would be low on the list of places you'd want to end up. China probably wins based on the availability of toilet paper alone. Britain was relatively peaceful and advanced for Northern Europe, but it's hard to think of places in Asia or Africa that suffered multiple decades-spanning civil wars that Britain did.
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That's not to say that such concerns aren't legitimate. For example, housing in the UK is generally expensive, reaching ludicrous and obscene levels in the South East of England and especially London. It means that anyone who isn't on a well-paid job in that area is going to have serious problems finding affordable accommodation. (FWIW, I'm disgusted that the UK economy is so obsessed with ever-increasing house
Re:I'm still LOLing... (Score:5, Informative)
If the UK voted to leave the EU, there is little chance that it will vote to join the U.S.
The last time we tried to acquire Canada, Washington DC burned down.
At the moment the U.S. has plenty to worry about than trying to expand it property. An election of two rather unpopular candidates (With one being batshit crazy, who seems to have conned much of the uneducated portion of the population). In a world that wants us to get more involved and less involved at the same time. While trying to maintain the growth and prosperity it achieved after it was the only major country that didn't have its infrastructure knocked out from WWII.
Re:I'm still LOLing... (Score:4, Funny)
(With one being batshit crazy, who seems to have conned much of the uneducated portion of the population).
So you've got Hillary covered. What is your criticism of Trump?
Y2K FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
Please stick to talking about Brexit, if you know anything about it. It's clear that you know nothing about Y2K.
Y2K passed off with barely a whimper because millions of software engineers around the planet took it seriously and worked their asses off for a good 6 months to make their software cope with the year ticking over to 2000. Code that would break was found absolutely everywhere, and quite astounding budgets had to be mobilized to fix everything in time. Additional contractors were engaged almost around the clock at extortionate rates in the final months, because there was so much code to remedy.
So yeah, Y2K went off very quietly, but no thanks to you. The thanks go to all the engineers who worked ridiculous hours to keep the systems you rely on from falling apart.
Re:Y2K was a serious but overblown problem (Score:5, Interesting)
While I'm not arguing that all the remediation was useless (much was definitely necessary) the problem was definitely blown out of proportion and there is copious evidence to support that assertion.
Says someone who has no clue about the problem. As the rest of your post shows.
I fixed about 1.5 millin lines of code written in COBOL and PL1. (Two different projects, the PL1 Job was only a quallity assurance as the original code was already fixed: "manually by the consultants you hate", while my company used a kind of specialized compiler)
The company where I fixed the close to 1 Million lines COBOL code woke up regarding the Y2K problem very late. They just got bought by an american company. And the new directors went ape shit when they realized the Y2K problem was not even tackled yet (that was mid 1998).
The company would have been out of business now, if we had not fixed ist software. And so would beall the customers of said company!!!
While we worked on such projects we had a partner company, a spin off from IBM basically but based on the Software Tool Chain that was developed by a Belgium/Dutch Company in an Erasmus project. (European EU wide distributed research Projects, mainly done in universities, partly in spin offs)
We had a joined venture with the Netherlands branch of "TriLoc Software Engineering, Milwaukee".
Basically every Company whee we fixed the code for would not have survived if we had not (or if we had made majour mistakes).
Exceptions that prove the rule (Score:3)
Says someone who has no clue about the problem. As the rest of your post shows.
You have no idea what my background is so you're not really in a position to judge. Furthermore the public facts are that there is a ton of evidence that Y2K simply wasn't as big a problem as it was made out to be. There were a few bits that definitely needed some serious fixing but the hype around the problem exceeded the reality of the problem for most companies.
I fixed about 1.5 millin lines of code written in COBOL and PL1.
Good job. Your personal experience doesn't change the facts though. Most companies had nothing close to that amount of code to fix if they ha
Re:Usual media FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
Trade will continue on as it has - the EU sends more to UK than UK sends to EU, so the EU is net worse off if it starts implementing tarriffs
Only if you completely ignore the relative sizes of the UK & EU GDPs and overall exports. Guess what, absolute numbers need context. A simple way of looking at it is "who would be hit hardest if UK-EU trade stopped overnight".
In 2015, the UK exported 220 billion GBP to the EU, whereas it imported 290 billion GBP. That is 44% of the UK's exports went to the EU, whereas 8-17% of the EU's exports went to the UK, so the UK would be a bigger loser.
As a percentage of GDP, the UK's EU exports made up about 10% of its GDP (2 trillion GBP), whereas the EU's UK exports made up a mere 2% of its GDP (12 trillion GBP).
Source: https://fullfact.org/europe/uk... [fullfact.org]
Re:Usual media FUD (Score:5, Funny)
Your facts are fear mongering. I don't want to hear them. I'm tired of experts and I don't like immigrants. And we won a big war a long time ago so there.
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You've completely missed the point - the fact that even though the UK has a trade deficit with the EU, it's the UK that is likely to be hit hardest because the relative size of their respective economies.
"Exports would go to the next highest marginal buyer."
If that would happen in the UK, so everything is fine and dandy, why would you discount it happening in the EU too?
Re:Usual media FUD (Score:4, Interesting)
Except that UK citizens will be worse off because the cost of imported products (including such basics as oil) will increase.
Perhaps you are too young to remember, but try googling the following words: "the pound in your pocket Wilson". Devaluation didn't work out then and there is no reason to think that it will work out now.
The Leave campaign was based on lies and this continues. A few days after the vote, there were statements in the newspapers proclaiming how the pound had risen strongly. Yes, the pound had risen a little, but it was still way less than than its pre-Brexit-vote value. The small bump in the value of the pound was irrelevant in comparison to the large drop immediately after the vote.
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more people holidaying at home
So a big downgrade in quality of life. A nice holiday overseas reduced to a week in Bognor. Butlins must be happy.
Trade will continue on as it has - the EU sends more to UK than UK sends to EU, so the EU is net worse off if it starts implementing tarriffs
That's an incredibly simplistic misunderstanding.
Take German car manufacturers. The dealer buys a car from the factory in Europe, which now costs them 10% more than it did before the vote. Someone is going to have to take this hit - either the manufacturer, the dealer or the consumer. Even cars made in the UK don't benefit much, because after we let our steel industry be destroyed by China (yay!
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It doesn't work that way, though. Britain spends a lot of money on the EU, but gets back far more in indirect returns (benefits from the single market, free labour to shore up industries, banking passports allowing London to be the financial capital of the world, etc.). You are suggesting that Britain somehow makes some money out of thin air to make up for the money it no longer receives from the EU. Scientists are always begging for scraps from everyone - EU, Westminster, it doesn't matter. Don't prete
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Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)